[Phys-L] Re: NYT article on where intelligent design comes from
From: Joel.Rauber at SDSTATE.EDU (Rauber, Joel)
Date: Tue Aug 23 10:54:20 2005
Just a quick follow-up comment on what John wrote:
|
| 1) This intelligent-design stuff is very dangerous.
| The guys driving this are selfish, smart, cynical, and
| well-funded. They mean business.
|
| 2) This is not primarily a conflict between religion and
| science. The primary force here is politics. The ID
| "movement" is being stage-managed by political operatives for
| political reasons.
The above two items are very important, and many of us "scientists" seem to miss the above two points, particularly #2
(AA)
|
| These guys have been creating and exploiting religious and
| cultural "wedge issues" for decades. They're real good at it.
|
| They have money, and they want to turn it into political
| power. This is one of the ways they do that.
|
|
| The guys driving this are deeply anti-science, and they are
| afraid that scientists will rise up and oppose them in a big
| way. (If only it were true!) By destroying the credibility
| of science and scientists, they advance their political agenda.
|
Here I quibble just a tad, I'm not sure that the "guys" are anti-science. See item #2 above and items (AA) above. In a way they are being very "scientific" or perhaps more accurately stated "social scientific" in there methods. And I suspect that they are very scientific in how they deal with their investments; and the perceived value in the functionality of their electronic devices, boats, planes etc etc. I see item #1 and (AA) as the "evidence" against the claim that they are un-scientific.